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OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers

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This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected labour market and social policy studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.

Low Fertility Rates in OECD Countries

Facts and Policy Responses

Fertility rates have declined in most OECD countries to levels that are well below those needed to secure generation replacement. While attitudes towards this decline in fertility rates differ across countries, several OECD governments have introduced — or are considering — specific measures aimed at countering it. Such measures are often justified by government’s wish of either reducing some of the negative consequences of population ageing for society as a whole, or of removing obstacles that discourage those women wishing to have more children from doing so, because of the negative economic consequences of childbearing and of the length of the associated responsibilities. This paper provides a comparative overview of the evidence about the size, timing and nature of this decline in fertility rate across “mature” OECD countries, and about the effects of different measures introduced to deal with it.

The first chapter of this paper reviews a range of indicators of the fertility ...